Speaker 1: We have this whole, massive community of people in recovery,
Speaker 1: but most of them are not talking about it. So again,
Speaker 1: it was this combination of like, Oh, there's this thing
Speaker 1: that's connected to me that I'm also interested in exploring
Speaker 1: journalistically intellectually. But then I was like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write about dogs. I needed a mental health break.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Off the Cup, my anti anxiety antidote. I
Speaker 2: hope you're feeling good, but I hear from so many
Speaker 2: of you that it's hard to feel good when the
Speaker 2: world around us is so scary.
Speaker 3: And believe me, I can totally relate.
Speaker 2: This podcast is always for me at least, and I
Speaker 2: hope for you and attempt to be a break from
Speaker 2: all of the chaos and anxiety and bad news. And
Speaker 2: in attempting to be a break from all that, we
Speaker 2: talk about a lot of things on this podcast with
Speaker 2: a lot of incredible and fascinating people. We share their
Speaker 2: funny stories, we talk about career highs and lows. We
Speaker 2: get into mental health, of course, and a thing that
Speaker 2: comes up so so often. I'm noticing, both in telling
Speaker 2: these stories and in our attempts to process or distract
Speaker 2: ourselves from what's going on around us is change. It's
Speaker 2: sort of like the one constant thread through all the
Speaker 2: stories we tell, right, because the change is what makes
Speaker 2: them important and worth telling and worth learning from.
Speaker 3: When we talk to Mark Duplas about.
Speaker 2: His anxiety journey and mine and the way having a
Speaker 2: nervous breakdown changed us and how scary that was and
Speaker 2: how we grieved that loss. When we talked to Ricky
Speaker 2: Lake about everything she survived, including the suicide of her
Speaker 2: husban and two wildfires that destroyed everything she had, and
Speaker 2: surviving that abrupt change in circumstances. When we talk to
Speaker 2: Michael Chickliss about our anxiety over social media and our
Speaker 2: kids and adapting to a changing world and.
Speaker 3: Fearing it rightfully.
Speaker 2: Or when we talk to Stacy Lindsay about turning forty
Speaker 2: right and all that means, particularly for women. Or when
Speaker 2: we talk to Huey Lewis about losing his hearing, or
Speaker 2: Henry Winkler about the jobs that didn't come when Happy
Speaker 2: Days ended, or shep Rose about his ayahuasca healing journey.
Speaker 2: It's all really about change, isn't it, And how we
Speaker 2: navigate those changes, how we seek out change internally and externally.
Speaker 3: The allure of Reinvention.
Speaker 2: Well, today's guest is a brilliant, award winning writer whose
Speaker 2: new book is about all of that. Ben Want Denise
Speaker 2: Lewis is a contributing writer at The New York Times magazine.
Speaker 2: He's written New York Times bestselling books including America Anonymous,
Speaker 2: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life, and Travels with Casey,
Speaker 2: My Journey through Our Dog Crazy Country. He's written for Slate, Detail, Salon, Sports, Illustrated,
Speaker 2: The Advocate, The New Republic, out Spin. He's a professor
Speaker 2: at Emerson College, and his new book is You've Changed
Speaker 2: The Promise and Price of Self Transformation.
Speaker 3: Welcome Ben Wa Denise Lewis.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Sie Well, I'm.
Speaker 2: So excited to have you. This is such an important topic.
Speaker 2: And I know you've been working on this book for
Speaker 2: a while now because we first talked about it several
Speaker 2: several years ago.
Speaker 3: What then made you.
Speaker 2: Want to tackle this was what was going on in
Speaker 2: the world? Was it what was going on for you personally?
Speaker 2: A combination? Talk about the genesis of this book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's always a combination with me, even
Speaker 1: if I don't realize it at the time. Consciously, I
Speaker 1: think for me, there were two threads going on. One
Speaker 1: was could I changed myself and in what ways? And
Speaker 1: for me that started a long time ago when I
Speaker 1: wrote a book about addiction, was struggling with my own addiction.
Speaker 1: I was interested in this idea like who gets better
Speaker 1: who doesn't? What's the difference? Like what happens? What's the
Speaker 1: magic formula if there is one? So I was interested
Speaker 1: initially from that. Then a friend of mine, Michael Glatz,
Speaker 1: when we worked together at a magazine for young gay
Speaker 1: men at San Francisco when we were both very young,
Speaker 1: early twenties, he was the proudest gay person I knew,
Speaker 1: very political. We had a lot of differences because I
Speaker 1: mostly he was much more political at the time than
Speaker 1: I was, and much more of a black and white thinker.
Speaker 1: In any event, he was the proudest game and I knew.
Speaker 1: Several years later he decides he's not gay anymore and
Speaker 1: renounced everything that he had previously said, And so that
Speaker 1: really got me thinking about change, identity change. So he
Speaker 1: went sort of from like an atheist queer activist to
Speaker 1: a conservative, evangelical and culture.
Speaker 4: Fan and straight Yes that's straight, and so and so
Speaker 4: and so what happened and how did he make sense
Speaker 4: of that, and how did we the rest of us
Speaker 4: interpret that change and his shift as dumbfounding as it
Speaker 4: was sort.
Speaker 1: Of predicted this crazy last decade that we've lived in
Speaker 1: with so much identity shifting. So if I had told you,
Speaker 1: I mean, we live in this bizarre world, right, if
Speaker 1: I told you in twenty fourteen Donald Trump would be
Speaker 1: president twice, Miloianopolis would claim to be straight, I mean
Speaker 1: he would you would think I was. I mean, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't invite me on a podcast.
Speaker 3: So as the Cup would vote for Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, exactly.
Speaker 5: So all of these things, and we've lived in this
Speaker 5: very contentious, fascinating in some ways, very disorienting, disorienting shift,
Speaker 5: and people have been shifting in all kinds of ways
Speaker 5: around gender, sexuality, politics, spirituality, and in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Which was the last time that we sort of had
Speaker 1: this massive kind of identity shift happen, and so many
Speaker 1: people sort of looking for answers in a time of
Speaker 1: confusion and social change and political disillusionment. You know, those folks,
Speaker 1: they tended to like go to California or join in
Speaker 1: ashrom And in the last ten years, a lot of
Speaker 1: those changes have been happening behind closed doors. We don't
Speaker 1: leave our apartments, and then we narrate those identity transformations.
Speaker 1: We have to narrate it to the rest of the world.
Speaker 3: There's a kind of social medias, yes, So I.
Speaker 1: Think that's sort of where those two threads both of like, well,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to actually change, what does the
Speaker 1: experience feel like for the person going through it? And
Speaker 1: then how do the rest of us celebrate poo pooh
Speaker 1: dismiss those shifts? And we see it, you know, we
Speaker 1: see it most obviously with people who shift their politics,
Speaker 1: where there's a kind of you know, one side which
Speaker 1: is like, well, they've lost their mind, they've gone down
Speaker 1: the rabbit hole. The other side is like they've seen
Speaker 1: the light. Right, So we have these very like knee
Speaker 1: jerk instinctual responses often to how to whether it change
Speaker 1: is like valid or good?
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: So I was interested in those kinds of sort of
Speaker 1: often knee jerk, not very well thought through responses.
Speaker 2: And I love this and there's I want to get
Speaker 2: into the politics. I want to get into so much
Speaker 2: of this and the stories that you tell in this book.
Speaker 2: But just sticking with process for a second, because I'm
Speaker 2: in the midst of finishing up my third book, and
Speaker 2: this one's about my mental health journey, and so I
Speaker 2: love talking to other writers who've done the same. And
Speaker 2: we had susan orlean on, and she and I similarly
Speaker 2: struggled with, like how to write about ourselves because we
Speaker 2: mostly write about the world around us. It's so hard
Speaker 2: to write about myself, especially what I've been through. I've
Speaker 2: really struggled with it. And in this book You've changed,
Speaker 2: you share a lot of your personal stories as well.
Speaker 2: Did you start with the decision to include your own
Speaker 2: stories or did you start out wanting to write about
Speaker 2: around you and then come to the decision to include
Speaker 2: your own pov like talk about your process a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think this always happens with me, where I
Speaker 1: have this intention to like, I'm this book's not going
Speaker 1: to be about me. I'm just going to write about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've always written about other people, but I
Speaker 1: have ye. In my book sort of the addiction book,
Speaker 1: I ended up writing about myself because I'm like, I
Speaker 1: can't write this book about addiction and pretend that I
Speaker 1: haven't been dealing with these same issues. So, yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't actually intentional in that sense. The Dog book that
Speaker 1: was sort of a break. I'm like, I've written about addiction.
Speaker 1: I need to drive around the country with my dog.
Speaker 1: But even that book ended up like I kind of
Speaker 1: fell for this person and there was this drama that happened.
Speaker 1: So that ended up, and I wrote about all my insecurities,
Speaker 1: does my dog love me? All that stuff? So I
Speaker 1: did all that, and then in this book again, yeah,
Speaker 1: the the crux of it was like how do people
Speaker 1: change and how do we interpret it culturally? And how
Speaker 1: can I write about this strange moment that we're living in.
Speaker 1: And then through that process I again ended up being like, wow,
Speaker 1: well I'm trying to change in some interesting ways. I
Speaker 1: am changing in some ways, I'm not changing in others.
Speaker 1: And so where it makes sense in the book, I
Speaker 1: do sort of veer off into these areas and I
Speaker 1: attend to a lot of like change workshops, so I
Speaker 1: write about that kind of experience. I went out to
Speaker 1: Essoln which is there not treatment center, which is this
Speaker 1: nice retreat center California coast, and I went there. I
Speaker 1: ended up writing a lot about my father, who is
Speaker 1: a writer also who's written about change, and I found
Speaker 1: myself just turning into my father. So there's the question of, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we do all these things to control how
Speaker 1: we change, right, We like assume that we're these were
Speaker 1: the master of like our change story, right, and that
Speaker 1: we had to change in all the ways that we want,
Speaker 1: And then you know, but it's much more complicated that
Speaker 1: we change in relationship to people. We change because one
Speaker 1: our tribe has hurt us in some way and we
Speaker 1: need to find a new one. We change, We just
Speaker 1: become our parents without wanting to. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, and I'm not suggesting that we don't control
Speaker 1: in any ways. Like for me, one of my goals
Speaker 1: was to be much more connected to myself, much more
Speaker 1: vulnerable in relationships, much more open in relationships, a much
Speaker 1: better friend. And so those were like goals that I had,
Speaker 1: which I think i've my friends tell me I'm changed,
Speaker 1: I'm much I'm much better in relationships. So there's ways
Speaker 1: in which I think that I had these goals that
Speaker 1: I wanted to shift. So it ended up again having
Speaker 1: this element of my own story which is always which
Speaker 1: is always a little scary, I'll tell you, but it's
Speaker 1: less it is it's gotten less scary for me now
Speaker 1: that I don't care what other people think so much. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that has shifted from when I wrote my addiction book,
Speaker 1: which was terrifying, to this one. And people have read
Speaker 1: the book saying, oh, you're so vulnerable. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are things that I keep private. I
Speaker 1: mean we don't put everything on the page, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that random strangers are not like they don't get to
Speaker 1: get everything about us, right, But it is vulnerable, And
Speaker 1: but I think I'm in a place where I that
Speaker 1: feels less scary.
Speaker 2: My editor was just reading like the latest draft, and
Speaker 2: he's like, you know, in this storytelling of your mental
Speaker 2: health journey, your husband.
Speaker 3: Is perfect in the story.
Speaker 2: And I why you're doing that, right, because this isn't
Speaker 2: about his flaws or his right challenges, right, but like
Speaker 2: you might want to let the reader in a little bit.
Speaker 2: I'm like, maybe he didn't get it right every time.
Speaker 3: So I know what you mean, like we don't we
Speaker 3: don't share everything, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, my husband is in this book in various places.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but you know, I'll tell you. Like the
Speaker 1: people as on this theme of like you know, we
Speaker 1: say we don't change for it, we can we shouldn't
Speaker 1: change for other people, right yeah, okay, Like that's true,
Speaker 1: that it's good to change for ourselves, but we change
Speaker 1: for other people all the time. Other people affect us.
Speaker 1: And my husband when I look back at at the
Speaker 1: experience of being with him for the last ten years,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like he tried to do this,
Speaker 1: but his like relentless. I mean, there's things that he
Speaker 1: would like to change about me, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but his generally his relentless sort of acceptance of me
Speaker 1: as I am, without wanting to change me, like changed me.
Speaker 1: Like right, oh wow, I can be this person can
Speaker 1: accept me me for and even without realizing it, that
Speaker 1: acceptance really like healed something in me.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 2: Oh and that's such a great point. We're going to
Speaker 2: get more into the book, but first I want to
Speaker 2: get to know you a little bit better for our audience.
Speaker 3: I always like to ask what kind of kid were you?
Speaker 1: So I write a little a little bit about this
Speaker 1: in the book. Right, So, I'm I was a kid
Speaker 1: who I grew up in San Francisco, the rare kid
Speaker 1: who grew up like in the city. My parents sort
Speaker 1: of both like progressive San Francisco types. So my mom
Speaker 1: is French, so they divorced when I was seven. I
Speaker 1: would go two weeks to each of their places, which
Speaker 1: was fairly disorienting, and I've talked to them about that
Speaker 1: because they each like my mom was quite strict and
Speaker 1: my dad was like, do whatever you want. And then
Speaker 1: so I had these very diferent sort of expectations. I
Speaker 1: think I was a you know my memories. I remember
Speaker 1: being very happy in middle school. I would just play
Speaker 1: sports with my friends and sort of and then high
Speaker 1: school came and I felt like a lost tourist in
Speaker 1: high school, Like I I think that I was well,
Speaker 1: I wasn't consciously dealing with the fact that I was gay,
Speaker 1: but I think that was underneath it. I felt totally
Speaker 1: I didn't feel cool in the way that I had
Speaker 1: in middle school, and I felt really really insecure, didn't
Speaker 1: know what I was doing. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: like tried to keep busy. I wrote plays for the
Speaker 1: school that the school produced. I played sports, so sort
Speaker 1: of from the outside, if someone was looking in, they
Speaker 1: might have said, oh, this kid hat sort of is
Speaker 1: doing fine. I was not doing fine. I was really
Speaker 1: really insecure, struggling to connect with my parents, unable to
Speaker 1: tell them anything about my fears. Yeah, it was not ideal,
Speaker 1: so but I was always I want I knew I
Speaker 1: wanted to be a writer, and my parents, even as
Speaker 1: they disagreed about most things, really agreed on that. They
Speaker 1: really were incredibly supportive of this idea that I would
Speaker 1: write in some way. And initially I was going to
Speaker 1: be a sports writer, and I then I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a playwright, and then I sort of ended up
Speaker 1: being this magazine long form magazine writer and writing books.
Speaker 1: So I guess the kind of kid I was was
Speaker 1: really compartmentalized and disconnected from my true feelings in a
Speaker 1: truly staggering way. When I look back on it. You know,
Speaker 1: most kids, not most, a lot of young people, especially
Speaker 1: in high school, struggling with their sexuality. It will be
Speaker 1: like WHOA am I gay? Like what does that mean?
Speaker 1: And should I come out? And like what is it?
Speaker 1: You know? But I never even let myself have that thought.
Speaker 1: I was so compartmentalized and in denial. So I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I was compartmental and in denial a lot
Speaker 1: as a kid.
Speaker 3: Were you I relate to this a lot? Were you?
Speaker 2: I know, you went to like a French international school.
Speaker 2: I know you went to Midil. I also went to
Speaker 2: private schools and then a very good Were you like
Speaker 2: a high achiever for most of childhood?
Speaker 1: Yes, though a bit of a slacker too. I was
Speaker 1: a high achiever who in the sense that I did
Speaker 1: like a lot of things, like I edited the paper,
Speaker 1: I wrote plays, I played sports. I was that kind
Speaker 1: of high achiever, and in class I was pretty good
Speaker 1: in the classes that I cared about. Unfortunately, I went
Speaker 1: to as you said, I went to this French American
Speaker 1: school and they made you take math in French and
Speaker 1: in English. So I got bad grades in two classes
Speaker 1: as a post just one. Right, there's this different philosophy
Speaker 1: about like what math is and how we do math,
Speaker 1: so that was frustrating. So I wasn't good at like
Speaker 1: math and like science and stuff like that. But in
Speaker 1: other English street that kind of stuff. I was interested
Speaker 1: in the things I was interested in, and then I
Speaker 1: sort of checked out of like math.
Speaker 3: I feel like whatever.
Speaker 2: Like when you're a high achieving kid for whatever reasons,
Speaker 2: like whatever made you that way, you get really good
Speaker 2: at compartmentalizing because you've just got to push through and
Speaker 2: you don't want everything to collapse, right, So you're just
Speaker 2: trying to keep everything, at least the artifice of everything
Speaker 2: sort of somewhat intact and so, right, you won't connect
Speaker 2: to the way you're really feeling until much much later.
Speaker 1: No connection to the way I was feeling. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: looking back on it, I'm like, how is that possible
Speaker 1: that I was so so, so so disconnected.
Speaker 3: Because you were great at compartmentalizing, yes, and so.
Speaker 1: A big part. And I started to get a little
Speaker 1: bit more connected in college. I sort of, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I felt like I started living again in college me too,
Speaker 1: I came out, you know, so, but then then then
Speaker 1: sort of quickly again, I started to struggle with addiction.
Speaker 1: So it became this this thing. And then since then,
Speaker 1: since my mid twenties, when I realized I was struggling
Speaker 1: with addiction and started this path of Like my dad
Speaker 1: says to me sometimes he goes, you know, in a
Speaker 1: way it's very sweet. He's like, well, I'm really proud
Speaker 1: of like all the things that you've done to try
Speaker 1: to like connect with yourself and sort of get better.
Speaker 1: And when he said that, I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: guess I have been trying to do that for like
Speaker 1: since I was twenty five and I'm fifty now, so
Speaker 1: you know this this, Yeah, I've been on this kind
Speaker 1: of journey to try to like understand myself and get better.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I write a lot about that
Speaker 1: in this book. I write about that sort of that process, yeah,
Speaker 1: which you know is very confusing. And then you know,
Speaker 1: we get to this point where then we try to
Speaker 1: like say, well, this led to that, and then I
Speaker 1: did this, and it all you know, we try to
Speaker 1: create these narratives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a hero's journey, and try to create a hero's
Speaker 2: journey so that it all sounds okay to us, right.
Speaker 1: When in reality there's a lot more mystery and uncertainty
Speaker 1: to this than I think. But that's not very satisfying
Speaker 1: to people, this idea that we like that there's going
Speaker 1: to be a mystery and we don't really know why
Speaker 1: we get the way we get.
Speaker 2: So, yes, what kind of writing jobs do you get
Speaker 2: after college?
Speaker 1: So? I, well, I grew up and I was lucky.
Speaker 1: I ended up first going working in a newspaper in
Speaker 1: outside San Francisco. Then I worked at x Y magazine,
Speaker 1: which was this really amazing magazine for young gay men
Speaker 1: in the late nineties early two thousand, it was this
Speaker 1: like back then you could still think you were like
Speaker 1: the only gay kid in Iowa. So this magazine was
Speaker 1: incredibly meaningful. We would have we would have young young
Speaker 1: men all over the country writing us and being like,
Speaker 1: thank god, I found this MA magazine, you know. So
Speaker 1: we felt this like deep responsibility to because we were
Speaker 1: helping a lot of people. And that's where I met Michael,
Speaker 1: who was like, you know, incredibly he inspired so many
Speaker 1: young people. He had a way of connecting and inspiring them.
Speaker 1: And then when he went X gay, everyone was like,
Speaker 1: well they were a lot of the readers were incredibly
Speaker 1: like confused by that and what does that mean? So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I started writing for sf Weekly, which was
Speaker 1: this weekly, wrote cover stories for them, and then I
Speaker 1: started writing for magazine. So that's sort of my my arc.
Speaker 1: And with magazines, I you know, I love, I loved
Speaker 1: and I still love being able to immerse myself for
Speaker 1: weeks or months inside communities oftentimes of people who were
Speaker 1: unlike me, Yeah, and trying to understand them and write
Speaker 1: about them. So I wrote about I've written a lot
Speaker 1: about teen Christians in my twenties, and that was a
Speaker 1: group that really fascinated me. And I say this a
Speaker 1: lot to my students. I say the fact that I
Speaker 1: have written about and spent so much time with people
Speaker 1: unlike me has been the biggest gifts of my life
Speaker 1: because I just learned that I could connect with people
Speaker 1: even if we disagreed on things, Yeah, in a way
Speaker 1: that some of my friends don't have that feeling because
Speaker 1: they haven't experienced that. Now. I think that Trump era
Speaker 1: has tested this ability to sort of find common ground
Speaker 1: with people that we disagree with it. And that's been
Speaker 1: really disorienting to me because I've always found myself I
Speaker 1: have many conservative Republican friends I have, you know, even
Speaker 1: though I'm not that, and and I've always loved that
Speaker 1: even as we disagreed on things. The last ten years
Speaker 1: has been a test of those kinds of bonds and
Speaker 1: this question of like how we communicate with people who
Speaker 1: are different and really interesting. And I write about Dave
Speaker 1: Fleischer who goes deep canvassing in this book about sort
Speaker 1: of how do we change people's minds? And Dave is
Speaker 1: amazing because he you know people, he'll go to their
Speaker 1: front door, and a conservative we'll say, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to talk to a liberal and then you know, and
Speaker 1: then Dave just charms them and connects with them, and
Speaker 1: like thirty minutes later they're like, do you need to
Speaker 1: leave so soon?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And so creating this this this heart connection in a way.
Speaker 1: And so this question of like how do we this
Speaker 1: is sort of a thread in the book, is like
Speaker 1: how do our beliefs both about ourselves and the world shift?
Speaker 1: And so that's a thread that I'm particularly interested in,
Speaker 1: especially during this time. Yep.
Speaker 2: And we're like I said, we're going to talk more
Speaker 2: about about politics in a minute, but just one more
Speaker 2: before we get into the book. When when nine to
Speaker 2: eleven happened, I was twenty two, I was living in Manhattan,
Speaker 2: I was a writer, and it changed everything, not the
Speaker 2: least of which was what I wanted to write about.
Speaker 2: And so nine to eleven is why I shifted from
Speaker 2: writing about sports at the New York Times and like
Speaker 2: culture to politics, and that sort of defined my career. Now,
Speaker 2: you end up writing about something incredibly important and you
Speaker 2: wrote about it a lot, sexual identity and mental health.
Speaker 2: Was that an intentional decision to sort of carve out
Speaker 2: that niche because it was important to you? Or did
Speaker 2: you just find yourself really drawn wanting to write about
Speaker 2: that important topic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good question. I think that it was
Speaker 1: probably a combination. In my twenties, I was like, I
Speaker 1: was writing about things that I was like navigating, right,
Speaker 1: so identity and sexuality and LGBT life, and I sort
Speaker 1: of felt connected to a lot of that stuff, so
Speaker 1: I could know sort of the scene. I think about
Speaker 1: the example of I had I forget what year, this
Speaker 1: was two thousand and six or seven, anyway, two of
Speaker 1: my friends in their twenties were like gay friends were
Speaker 1: like I got married, and I'm like, you're twenty three
Speaker 1: and you're gay. What do you mean you got married?
Speaker 1: This was like a different time, right, yeah, And so
Speaker 1: I and I was like, oh interesting. And so I
Speaker 1: ended up like I was interest, well, what does marriage
Speaker 1: mean to you as a gay man who's twenty three
Speaker 1: and one of these first folks who were doing this?
Speaker 1: And so I ended up writing a long piece for
Speaker 1: The New York Times magazine about that question what did
Speaker 1: marriage mean for this first generation of like twenty something
Speaker 1: gay men who were getting married. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that I ended up writing about were sort
Speaker 1: of connected to like my my area of like life, right,
Speaker 1: and so I would get connected these And then I
Speaker 1: also think I was just interested when we think about
Speaker 1: mental health again, I was navigating this stuff in my
Speaker 1: own life and with addiction it was I was really
Speaker 1: I came in addiction thinking like, you know, we we
Speaker 1: don't think about this in very nuanced ways. We have
Speaker 1: this whole massive community of people in recovery, but most
Speaker 1: of them are not talking about it, and we because
Speaker 1: because of the sort of the the idea of anonymity
Speaker 1: in this in that program. So we have this whole
Speaker 1: culture where there's this whole world of people in recovery,
Speaker 1: we're not thinking about treating addiction in very smart ways.
Speaker 1: I was struggling with my own so again it was
Speaker 1: this combination of like, oh, there's this thing that's connected
Speaker 1: to me that I'm also interested in exploring journalistically intellectually.
Speaker 1: Uh so, you're right, those are two threads that have
Speaker 1: that have always been there. I guess we psychoanalyze me
Speaker 1: why why those why those subjects?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: And then but then I was like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: write about dogs because I needed I needed a mental
Speaker 1: health break, and even that ended up not being that.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, Okay, let's talk about change.
Speaker 3: The allure of reinvention.
Speaker 2: And I want to ask you about reinvention in a second,
Speaker 2: because I've sort of a complicated relationship with that. But
Speaker 2: the allure of reinvention, it's just so powerful and it's
Speaker 2: ubiquitous today. You can find it literally everywhere you look,
Speaker 2: from like the megachurch and its promise of reinvention and transcendence,
Speaker 2: to like skincare commercials, to social media and the promise
Speaker 2: of reinventing yourself. There the self help guru, that whole community.
Speaker 2: Why is transformation such an appealing idea right now?
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's always I think we need to
Speaker 1: start with It's always been an appealing idea, so sort
Speaker 1: of you know, if we think think throughout, well not always,
Speaker 1: but you know, when we think pre mid nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: when the concept of sort of identity in the self,
Speaker 1: and then in the seventies we sort of see new
Speaker 1: age culture coming, you know, before that. And there are
Speaker 1: exceptions to this, like Buddhist ideas of change and all that,
Speaker 1: but essentially, we did not change for ourselves. We changed
Speaker 1: for our church, We changed for the honor of our family,
Speaker 1: we changed for these out you know, for the for
Speaker 1: the original life coach in the sky. You know, we
Speaker 1: changed for these things that were outside of us. So
Speaker 1: the idea generally that we would have some inner thing
Speaker 1: that we're searching for and that's going to sort of
Speaker 1: guide our change is a relatively modern phenomenon. This idea,
Speaker 1: I'm not changing for anyone else. I'm following my purpose.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the person that I should be
Speaker 1: that I am. So this kind of thing is fairly modern.
Speaker 1: I think that if we look at the last ten years,
Speaker 1: starting in about twenty fifteen, identity becomes this really all
Speaker 1: consuming idea. And I think that there's a way in
Speaker 1: which it's not probably completely disconnected from the fact that
Speaker 1: the last ten years have been so disorienting and so
Speaker 1: crazy making. And you know, when we live in a
Speaker 1: world that feels like we can't control it. And I
Speaker 1: talk to a lot of my students and there's this
Speaker 1: overwhelming sense in some ways they've never known anything different, right,
Speaker 1: because they were you know, they've only known really as
Speaker 1: this last ten year period of and so and my
Speaker 1: students are are often telling me like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how I can impact the world, And it feels like
Speaker 1: sort of impossible. And so I think when we can,
Speaker 1: when we struggle to sense that we can like impact
Speaker 1: the world in some way, we look for the things
Speaker 1: that we can control, and that is some sense of
Speaker 1: how we identify uh and and we can put the
Speaker 1: focus on ourselves. In the seventies, when when so many
Speaker 1: of the anti war protesters were disillusioned, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: what do we do now? And they went to sort
Speaker 1: of meditation a Schram's. There was this like we're going
Speaker 1: to change the world by medical.
Speaker 3: Cults, I right, and cults yes, not surprisingly.
Speaker 1: Yes and so and so now I ask my students like, well,
Speaker 1: what's going to be your thing? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Your generation?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's going to be what are you going to
Speaker 1: try to sort of be the change?
Speaker 3: What do they say?
Speaker 1: So I'll as that in a second quick thing, the
Speaker 1: last after my book. So Gandhi did not say be
Speaker 1: the change you want to see happen Gandhi, So al
Speaker 1: Gore has been saying this for years over many people
Speaker 1: have been saying, you know, as Gandhi said, So Gandhi
Speaker 1: had that idea, But it was actually this woman, Arlene Lawrence,
Speaker 1: who's in her eighties, who lives in a retirement community
Speaker 1: in Arizona, who said who first coined the phrase in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, And so I went to visit her,
Speaker 1: and she's very fun and kooky, just about sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: what does that mean today? So anyway, so that's really
Speaker 1: interesting because we've just been there's so many quotes that
Speaker 1: we just assume are from people that are not from
Speaker 1: those people. When you do five minutes.
Speaker 3: And it's Arlene in Arizona.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's Arlene, and and she goes in like she's
Speaker 1: very She goes to strangers in the she's she hugs
Speaker 1: everyone and strangers in the supermarket and she says, what's
Speaker 1: the most important thing in your life? And she says
Speaker 1: it with this way that people do not banish her
Speaker 1: from the produce aisle. They just sort of they sort
Speaker 1: of answer in a weird way. So anyway, so she's fascinating.
Speaker 1: You know. They really struggle with like how they're going
Speaker 1: to be the change today A lot of them. There
Speaker 1: is this thing that's happening really like in the last
Speaker 1: six months or year, and the Times and other places
Speaker 1: have sort of written about this, which is this like
Speaker 1: sense that so originally they would answer, well, it's sort
Speaker 1: of depressing. I think we're just going to go into
Speaker 1: our phones and it's just that's going to be We're
Speaker 1: just you know, one student's like, well, we're just going
Speaker 1: to do the activism like online, We're just gonna you know.
Speaker 1: And so but there's been this fascinating shift in the
Speaker 1: last six months where a lot of my students are saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: the phone is crack, I am completely addicted to it.
Speaker 1: Social media is crack, and I need to disengage so
Speaker 1: my stocks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so huh, I'm seeing that too.
Speaker 1: In some ways. Yeah, and they're they're you know, and
Speaker 1: the adults, so the rest of us are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: these kids addicted to their their things. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: addicted to our court ours. I mean, it's it's crazy,
Speaker 1: this kind of like, oh, these kids so addicted to
Speaker 1: their like adults need to look in the mirror here.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm seeing a lot of them sort
Speaker 1: of saying I can't this, I can't live like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so just this promising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this attempt to unplug and we're going to
Speaker 1: I'll see it. And I don't know if enough people
Speaker 1: are going to do that, But we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: There's a real scene.
Speaker 3: Like no, no, I've seen that too.
Speaker 2: But I've also been seeing very recently, like same six months,
Speaker 2: this movement among young people to go to church, and like,
Speaker 2: especially in places like New York City.
Speaker 3: I just read this whole article about like the hottest
Speaker 3: meet up dating scene is at church on Friday night.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I don't know how represent representative that is, but like
Speaker 2: it does seem to be a nostalgia among young people
Speaker 2: or an urge among young people to go back into
Speaker 2: something safer, more comforting, right, less scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I mean the you know, the
Speaker 1: data on church is a little mixed, but yes, I
Speaker 1: do think there is there is for some folks that
Speaker 1: is happening. Yeah, I think people, young people that I'm seeing,
Speaker 1: you know often in class, are are really struggling with that.
Speaker 1: I became really interested, and I talked about this in
Speaker 1: the last chapter of the book about and this sort
Speaker 1: of came to a head several years ago, where this
Speaker 1: sense of how do we like, how do we live
Speaker 1: our lives and attempt to sort of change and to
Speaker 1: be the change while also consuming all of the bad
Speaker 1: news that we consume on a daily basis and people
Speaker 1: being like, well, how do I do that? Like I
Speaker 1: want to stay informed and I also don't want to
Speaker 1: start my day with this news and feel completely depressed.
Speaker 1: So with with with Russia and Ukraine, there was this
Speaker 1: moment where both NPR and actually Fox News wrote pieces
Speaker 1: that were like, you don't need to watch the news
Speaker 1: all the time. You can protect yourself in some ways,
Speaker 1: and it was the response to that online was crazy.
Speaker 1: There was like how generally from the left, which was
Speaker 1: like how.
Speaker 3: Dare you disengage?
Speaker 1: Disengage? Right? So this this question of like the responsibility
Speaker 1: of like engaging versus disengaging. There's this been this like
Speaker 1: self care moment true about how do we make how
Speaker 1: do we like because if we're if we're drowning in
Speaker 1: sorrow all the time, like our brains were not meant
Speaker 1: to take in the amount of information that we that
Speaker 1: were taking in know what was happening in our family,
Speaker 1: like at the campfire nearby, like that's what we were
Speaker 1: designed to do. And so this question of like, well,
Speaker 1: how do we change like can we change ourselves if
Speaker 1: we're just sort of paralyzed by bad news? And so
Speaker 1: figuring out that balance as becomes really important to my students.
Speaker 1: I write about it in the book because I struggle
Speaker 1: with that and many other people do as well. Where
Speaker 1: is the balance there?
Speaker 3: Totally?
Speaker 2: We talk about it all the time on this podcast
Speaker 2: because it's that push pull, I mean, especially in what
Speaker 2: I do for a living. But you don't have to
Speaker 2: do it for a living to feel this way of like, well,
Speaker 2: is it privileged to disengage and set boundaries and you
Speaker 2: have the luxury, you know, to decide, Well, I don't
Speaker 2: need to know all of it, or I don't have to,
Speaker 2: you know, be an actual activist.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the guy in Ohio I forget in
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen the New York Times, I forget
Speaker 1: his name. I write about him briefly in the book.
Speaker 1: It was like, I'm going to the blockade. He moved
Speaker 1: to a farm in Ohio, and he's like, I'm not
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not going to watch anything. I'm going
Speaker 1: to not follow any I'm going to be the change
Speaker 1: in my little area. But you cannot tell me the
Speaker 1: news of the world. And that was a huge sort
Speaker 1: of explosion of anger towards him because he, you know,
Speaker 1: he had money and he was privileged, and that is
Speaker 1: a kind of privileged position to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: But he was sort of asking this question, which I
Speaker 1: don't think is completely unreasonable, of like, what actually is
Speaker 1: gained by sort of knowing everything all the time, right,
Speaker 1: like for the average person. And I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: much is gained from knowing everything all the time.
Speaker 2: But there's also the question of what good am I
Speaker 2: right for the causes that I care about, right if
Speaker 2: I'm you know, a pile of depression and paralyzed by
Speaker 2: all of this. So, I mean, I think it is
Speaker 2: a really interesting area to mine, and we're all still
Speaker 2: kind of trying to figure out where the sweet spot
Speaker 2: is reinvention.
Speaker 3: We need to talk about this.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I've kind of a complicated relationship with it.
Speaker 3: I've had to.
Speaker 2: Do it several times, and it never being my first
Speaker 2: choice to reinvent right, it was always somewhat painful. I
Speaker 2: definitely came out of every reinvention stronger and better off.
Speaker 2: But still it feels like we can try to make
Speaker 2: changes we didn't ask for seem better by injecting this
Speaker 2: agency of reinvention into them. So it feels like we've
Speaker 2: got some control over it, but it feels also like
Speaker 2: very much a false comfort for someone who never wanted
Speaker 2: the change in the first place. So as someone maybe
Speaker 2: on the hero's journey, as you're trying to reconstruct your
Speaker 2: narrative identity and put this thing that happened to you
Speaker 2: that you have to now reinvent after like talk about
Speaker 2: that and where we put that in our own psychees
Speaker 2: and how externally we're looking at reinvention and putting this
Speaker 2: like sort of positive spin on a change we didn't
Speaker 2: really want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we there's many areas, but I think
Speaker 1: we certainly see that with political identity change. So if
Speaker 1: we think about folks, I find I find it fascinating
Speaker 1: that the narratives and the reasoning that we need to
Speaker 1: come up with for changing our political identities. So typically
Speaker 1: if you think about and we talked about this, even
Speaker 1: the first time that we talked, and you said something
Speaker 1: very very common, which is, you know, I didn't change
Speaker 1: my party changed, right, Oh yeah, And that is that
Speaker 1: is kind of the the reason it's fascinating because like
Speaker 1: with so many different kinds of identity changes, we actual
Speaker 1: truly need we say yes, I changed, see me, validate me,
Speaker 1: I have this new identity I changed. I figured out
Speaker 1: who I was. I I see I I and we
Speaker 1: really need buy in like I changed. Yes, political identity
Speaker 1: shifters are fascinating because they pretty much will say and
Speaker 1: this is absolutely true. I think it's true in your case,
Speaker 1: but I would push you to look also at like
Speaker 1: I think political identity changes often don't if we think
Speaker 1: about let's say, take let's take Chadwick Moore, who was
Speaker 1: who was sort of on the left, a gay man,
Speaker 1: and he wrote this piece about Milo Yanapolis for Out magazine,
Speaker 1: which which progressives and the left and many of his
Speaker 1: peers got very angry about and and got and were
Speaker 1: very sort of critical of the piece. And I think
Speaker 1: Chadwick and I talked to Chadwick more about this, got
Speaker 1: very was like shocked by this, by this reaction, and
Speaker 1: then moved right uh and became a huge Trump supporter.
Speaker 1: He had a real big political shift. And and his
Speaker 1: when we talked, his reason for this was well, I
Speaker 1: just I you know, I I saw the light. It
Speaker 1: became clear to me that that you know, it was
Speaker 1: framed as this kind of intellectual realization of that that
Speaker 1: he would that he was wrong. And then the and
Speaker 1: the right was was right. And in reality, what happened,
Speaker 1: and this often happens for for many folks, is he
Speaker 1: was in deep pain because his group, his tribe, turn
Speaker 1: turned on him. And he would not admit this to me,
Speaker 1: but he was in deep pain. And when we're when
Speaker 1: when our group is attacking us, we look for comfort
Speaker 1: in another group. So for Chadwick and for many, you know,
Speaker 1: David Brock had the same experience changing changing back. You know,
Speaker 1: there is this way that we that we we we
Speaker 1: construct this idea. So Bob Inglis, the South Carolina congressman,
Speaker 1: he used to be a climate change denier. He and
Speaker 1: and he his family again, and he has this great
Speaker 1: line he says, he says, the heart decides and the
Speaker 1: head justifies. And for him, it was his family who said,
Speaker 1: you know, you should really look at this. You're wrong
Speaker 1: on this issue. He okay, He's like his family is
Speaker 1: pushing him. So he starts looking into it, and he
Speaker 1: talks to people of faith who were also you know,
Speaker 1: trying to tell him, yes, this is real. But they
Speaker 1: were talking to him in a way that he could understand,
Speaker 1: in a language of faith, and he ended up changing
Speaker 1: his position on this issue and said this great line.
Speaker 1: You know, the heart decides and the head justifies. So
Speaker 1: I think there's all these ways in which that is true,
Speaker 1: that there are these forces that are sometimes clear and
Speaker 1: sometimes less clear, that are there for us, that impact
Speaker 1: the way that we make these changes. And then in
Speaker 1: certain cases, and often when it's political, we have to
Speaker 1: sort of make the idea that this was a purely
Speaker 1: like head decision, a logical decision. Yes, I came to
Speaker 1: understand something new, when in reality, in many cases of change,
Speaker 1: there is this deep yearning for connection, for community, needing
Speaker 1: a new place to find a home.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really interesting because what I've seen a
Speaker 2: number of colleagues and friends do exactly what you're describing.
Speaker 2: They got attacked by their own side and then went
Speaker 2: to the place that had some comfort, right. And I
Speaker 2: think that's really understandable. I've seen that a lot in
Speaker 2: media and politics. I don't know if I'm doing the
Speaker 2: thing you said not to do, but like I.
Speaker 3: Don't, I I don't believe that's what happened to me.
Speaker 2: And in fact, when I was talking about my reinventions,
Speaker 2: I wasn't talking about politics at all. I was talking
Speaker 2: about having.
Speaker 3: To quit Boston Ballet.
Speaker 2: As a you know, older teenager and give up my
Speaker 2: dream and then invent a new life, and then having
Speaker 2: to reinvent mid career, having to reinvent after having a
Speaker 2: nervous breakdown. But for me, the political part, when I
Speaker 2: say my party changed, like literally, it's not that they
Speaker 2: started attacking me.
Speaker 3: They didn't. They wanted me to believe them and stay
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 2: And what I saw sounded nothing like the things that
Speaker 2: drew me to conservatism in the first place.
Speaker 3: Because that left That was the first disorienting part.
Speaker 2: Right, the place I had gone for conservatism was absent,
Speaker 2: was gone, it was jettisoned because the principal didn't care
Speaker 2: about it, and so then everyone stopped stuff. I didn't
Speaker 2: go to a new place. I didn't become a Democrat, right,
Speaker 2: even though these are my new friends and I appreciate that,
Speaker 2: But like I didn't need comfort. I just needed to
Speaker 2: sit in my own truth and feel like I wasn't
Speaker 2: going crazy and I had my conscience intact and saying
Speaker 2: the things that were.
Speaker 3: Right to me, whoever they went against.
Speaker 2: And so that means now, you know, I'll call out democrats,
Speaker 2: I'll call it republicans, I'll praise democrats, occasionally praise Republicans
Speaker 2: when you know, you figure out something to do, right,
Speaker 2: But like, that's that was. So when I say I
Speaker 2: did not change, I really mean that. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: become a damper. I didn't change all my principles and.
Speaker 1: All my value and yeah, and there's certainly and I
Speaker 1: trust you when you say that. That feels true to
Speaker 1: me from what I know about you.
Speaker 3: But what you're saying also makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're also a little bit more introspective than
Speaker 1: so many of these folks who are like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's all these stories like what happened to this, what
Speaker 1: happened to the you know, yeah, like the New York
Speaker 1: Times and stuff will sort of be like try to
Speaker 1: understand these shifts, and they'll ask the person and the
Speaker 1: person I asked like they really not thought about this,
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're like, like, well, no, my party
Speaker 1: just went crazy. And again that happens, like parties shift
Speaker 1: and we're in this big realignment and like all of
Speaker 1: this stuff is shifting. But yeah, I'm always shocked to
Speaker 1: the lack of introspection among some folks around this. And I,
Speaker 1: you know, in trying to write about this shift. I
Speaker 1: wrote about two people in my political chapter. One who
Speaker 1: is this gay socialist friend of mine who I met
Speaker 1: in my twenties who sort of threw the not uncommon
Speaker 1: process of like realizing he didn't like wokeness and then
Speaker 1: trans stuff and then sort of became more conservative. And
Speaker 1: then I wrote about these two young people, one mostly
Speaker 1: at Seapack, this young conservative activist who I never would
Speaker 1: have predicted would shift. I mean, I met him in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen at Seapack and he was like, like this
Speaker 1: trumpy kid, and he's now a Democrat, and the question
Speaker 1: of like, but then everyone interpreting, like his friends are like, well,
Speaker 1: he moved to New York City and he's a lawyer,
Speaker 1: so he had to take on this new identity, and
Speaker 1: so we're.
Speaker 2: Always like, yes, projecting something on top of it.
Speaker 3: That happens to me too. People will be like, well,
Speaker 3: CNN did that to her? What do you mean? What what? What?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 4: What do you mean?
Speaker 3: I could make so much more money if I just
Speaker 3: went mega.
Speaker 1: Trust me, I know, I know, And so it's fascinating
Speaker 1: because but it's it's it's really hard for people who
Speaker 1: change their political identities, most of whom are not famous, right,
Speaker 1: they have to often like move friends. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like a big I think that's.
Speaker 2: Really deleterious that we have made our political identity so
Speaker 2: so important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but listen, I think it's important to really and this.
Speaker 1: I've become fascinated by this. We are always narrating our
Speaker 1: changes and having we need other people to believe them
Speaker 1: and to and to echo them. And nowhere is this
Speaker 1: scene more clearly then. And I have a whole chapter
Speaker 1: on this because I found it so fascinating with murderers
Speaker 1: going up for parole who literally half it's a performance
Speaker 1: of transformation that is going to get them paroled. They
Speaker 1: have to prove to these two strangers in like these
Speaker 1: long sessions, psychological sessions that go back into childhood and
Speaker 1: all the work that they have changed. And sometimes even
Speaker 1: when they do, the Governor of California will step in
Speaker 1: and say, this often happens, like it's bad, that it's
Speaker 1: really bad to like murder someone who's famous. Then you're
Speaker 1: much less likely to get out. And there's these political
Speaker 1: cases where like a person's transformation sort of becomes irrelevant.
Speaker 1: You know. That's another thing that fascinates me, Like, like
Speaker 1: who's what are the cases where we say, all right,
Speaker 1: it's great that you changed, but it really doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because of what you did previously. And so for a
Speaker 1: lot of these these men who get paroled, they were
Speaker 1: very lucky. They got they got life with the possible
Speaker 1: ability of parole, and then they for some of them
Speaker 1: in some California prisons, it's like therapy all the time.
Speaker 1: You can just like one of the guys wrote this
Speaker 1: memoir and he's like, man, now that I'm out in
Speaker 1: the real world, I'll tell you, I wish I could
Speaker 1: find people who were doing the work the way the
Speaker 1: men were that I was hanging out with in prison.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: He just felt he had found this group of men
Speaker 1: who were like full time working to transform themselves, going
Speaker 1: to all these kind of workshops and all that. It
Speaker 1: was a very funny line. He's like, now that I'm
Speaker 1: out in the real world, I can't find people who
Speaker 1: are like as introspective and working to change themselves. I
Speaker 1: thought that was very funny.
Speaker 2: It is and that's so interesting, and I think that's
Speaker 2: very relatable too, even if you haven't been incarcerated. I
Speaker 2: have a colleague who I worked with on TV. This
Speaker 2: person got was fired, and I think really struggled with
Speaker 2: losing that part of their identity. And I have watched
Speaker 2: this person go restively deeper into these sort of self
Speaker 2: help settings, retreats, classes, gurus, life coaches, like it's constant
Speaker 2: and never ending for years, because I think it can
Speaker 2: become a bit of a trap sometimes. I think there's
Speaker 2: a side of it that can become a bit addictive.
Speaker 3: Can you talk to that at all? Have you seen
Speaker 3: any of that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, certainly, I think so. I did a lot. I
Speaker 1: did a lot of those kinds of things, and I
Speaker 1: went to a lot of these workshops, and psychedelics can
Speaker 1: become their own kind of thing, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: I think what happens is that we can and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the psychedelic world that are
Speaker 1: making these claims and promises even though psychedelics are can
Speaker 1: be really healing and amazing transformative when done in the
Speaker 1: right way. I've experienced it. I read a little bit
Speaker 1: about it in the book. You know, I spent this
Speaker 1: guy who I met at ESSL and who then you know,
Speaker 1: sort of helps people through these psychedelic experiences, you know,
Speaker 1: says this. He's like, Yeah, there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who say, well, if everyone just took mushrooms, you know,
Speaker 1: the world would be healed, and he doesn't believe that,
Speaker 1: and he sort of makes the claim that a lot
Speaker 1: of these sort of psychedelic evangelists are not truly healed,
Speaker 1: and because they're skipping a part of it. There's you know,
Speaker 1: it's spiritual bypassing is sort of the term where where
Speaker 1: you know, we do these things, but we're not actually
Speaker 1: doing the like the work of therapy, the work of therapy.
Speaker 1: So I became really interested both in like therapy. I
Speaker 1: have a therapy chapter because like, what does it mean
Speaker 1: to change in therapy? How do we change in therapy?
Speaker 1: I find that all fascinating because I've tried so many
Speaker 1: different kinds of therapies, and you know, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you know, I had a therapist that, you know,
Speaker 1: like in her child work, where she was very unconventional.
Speaker 1: She's like, put pictures of your parents to a to
Speaker 1: a like a punching bag and like eat them with
Speaker 1: a baseball bag. And I didn't. I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: do that. I love my parents. But but and then
Speaker 1: you know, so I've tried to all these different kinds
Speaker 1: of therapy we don't write about the book, so yes,
Speaker 1: but I think we can become dependent. There's this joke
Speaker 1: we can become like addicted to these transformational workshops. And
Speaker 1: the struggle is like you can feel incredibly like if
Speaker 1: I go to ESSLN or do one of these transformational
Speaker 1: workshops for a week, like I feel transformed by the
Speaker 1: end of it, and I'm like, oh, like now everything's
Speaker 1: going to be fine. And then and then you get
Speaker 1: back to the real world and it is everything is
Speaker 1: not fine.
Speaker 3: And right that high again that control.
Speaker 1: The question is like how do you how do we
Speaker 1: make in our daily lives? How do we create the
Speaker 1: conditions in our daily lives that make it so that
Speaker 1: we can have little pieces of these things that we
Speaker 1: have at these transformational workshops, because what typically happens or
Speaker 1: you go to treatment for addiction, you go, you have
Speaker 1: this major experience, and then you're back in the real
Speaker 1: world and you need sort of tools to continue to
Speaker 1: do that. And again, this is a position of privilege,
Speaker 1: like not everyone can afford those tools. Not everyone can
Speaker 1: afford to go to these places, you know, not everyone
Speaker 1: can afford therapy. Yeah, so there's a way in which
Speaker 1: a lot of this is is you know, is we're
Speaker 1: lucky to be able to access these things, and I'm
Speaker 1: certainly lucky to be able to access the therapy.
Speaker 3: That there's a class element to this for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, once again, this is such a great topic. It's
Speaker 2: so timely. The book is you've changed promise and price
Speaker 2: of self Transformation.
Speaker 3: You can go order it now.
Speaker 2: But while before we let you go, we like to
Speaker 2: end with a lightning round.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's fun fun. Okay, who's your favorite author?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm going to say the last great
Speaker 1: book I read? So my favorite writer, Tom Juno.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's your favorite work of fiction?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I have so many. I'll say by
Speaker 1: my friend Scott High Mysterious Skin. Okay, I probably haven't
Speaker 1: heard of it yet.
Speaker 3: Nope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's your best tip for dealing with writer's block?
Speaker 1: Take a shower? Okay, yes, so take a shower or
Speaker 1: go for a walk. I find that all of my
Speaker 1: I mean this is less well, no, it's really it's
Speaker 1: about so if I'm struggling with structure, how going to
Speaker 1: structure this thing? Yeah? I take a shower and the
Speaker 1: water coming down on me. I get great answers amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So take a shower or go for a walk.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I do?
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'll pretend you have to be alone to do this.
Speaker 2: I'll pretend I'm being interviewed about this part of the book.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And I'll anticipate, because this is what I do in
Speaker 2: my life, right, I anticipate what someone's going to say
Speaker 2: or what someone's going to ask, and both as an
Speaker 2: interviewer and as a guest. So I'll anticipate what the
Speaker 2: interviewer is going to ask me, and then I'll invent
Speaker 2: an answer and maybe I'll do it a couple of
Speaker 2: times until I get something that sounds really great, and
Speaker 2: then I'll go write about it.
Speaker 1: Wow. Do you actually speak it out loud?
Speaker 3: Yes, so you have to.
Speaker 2: Be alone, but otherwise it sounds crazy.
Speaker 3: But I talk a loud a lot.
Speaker 2: Just as I'm talking through the things I'm going to
Speaker 2: say on TV or what I'm going to write about,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's natural for me. But like when
Speaker 2: I really can't figure out where to go or how
Speaker 2: to say it, or even what I want to say,
Speaker 2: I'll pretend I'm being interviewed and on the spot. Wow,
Speaker 2: and so and then I'll have to answer, and if
Speaker 2: I don't like it, I'll do it again.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. That's a idea. You're you're a preparer.
Speaker 2: I'm a rehearsal. Yeah, so if I rehearse it in
Speaker 2: my head or even out loud, then I can just
Speaker 2: go and do it. But yeah, that puts me in
Speaker 2: a place where I kind of like like I'm jolted
Speaker 2: into like having to know huh when I don't if
Speaker 2: I'm just sitting in front of a blank page. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 2: what's a concert to see before you die?
Speaker 3: So someone you haven't seen, but you've got to.
Speaker 6: Oh god, someone I have not seen? Who I've seen?
Speaker 6: I've seen so many? Maybe yeah, maybe too?
Speaker 2: Okay great. What's your favorite thing to eat at a
Speaker 2: baseball game?
Speaker 1: A Polish sausage?
Speaker 3: Okay, in Chicago or anywhere?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Anywhere? Yeah, yeah, I eat a Polish sausage. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Any kind of hot dog, yeah, but polish.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. What's your favorite film?
Speaker 1: Oh god, I don't know if I can answer that.
Speaker 1: I will say I'll pick the Famous My favorite film
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager and I would watch it
Speaker 1: before basketball games, and it's Hoosiers.
Speaker 3: It's a great film.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably my favorite. It was my favorite movie
Speaker 1: growing up. I would literally watch it before basketball games
Speaker 1: to sort of hype myself up.
Speaker 3: A great time to watch it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I know you spent some time in Boston.
Speaker 2: That's my hometown. What's your favorite thing to do in Boston?
Speaker 1: My favorite thing to do in Boston. So I live
Speaker 1: in Jamaica. Plane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a pew right and town.
Speaker 1: Yeah town. So maybe my friend my friends who love Boston,
Speaker 1: it's probably to leave Boston and to and to go
Speaker 1: and to go to the Cape, or to go to
Speaker 1: New Hampshire or Vermont. My thing to do in Boston,
Speaker 1: let me just think. Uh, I would say the Arnold
Speaker 1: Arboretum walking around there. Yeah, it may be my favorite
Speaker 1: thing to do in bond Now. I love, I have a,
Speaker 1: I have a. I have a complicated relationship with Boston.
Speaker 1: I wish it was different in some ways. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's cool enough to be as expensive as
Speaker 1: it is. I don't know. I hear that it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, I love Boston and I love I love
Speaker 1: Jamaica Plane, and I love Summerville, and I love Cambridge,
Speaker 1: and I love the kind of I love my friends here,
Speaker 1: and I love the the intellectual kind of energy here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, this is the final question. It's very important
Speaker 2: to me. We ask it at the end of every podcast.
Speaker 2: When is it iced coffee season?
Speaker 1: It is always iced coffee season. Yes, and I have one.
Speaker 1: I actually only drink one a day, and it's right
Speaker 1: after lunch, so I am not a morning I'm a
Speaker 1: morning tea person. And then I have lunch and then
Speaker 1: I have my ice coffee to sort of start the
Speaker 1: second half of the day.
Speaker 3: It's a great time to have it. How do you
Speaker 3: have it? How do you take it?
Speaker 1: Well? I put a little bit of milk sometimes ice latte.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you I'm half French, and when I go
Speaker 1: to France, this is a big problem. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever tried to get ice drink, it's you know,
Speaker 1: and then the person will she'll be like in French,
Speaker 1: she'll be like fine, and then she puts you in
Speaker 1: a couple little.
Speaker 3: Ice cubes, chips, ice chips, ice chips.
Speaker 1: As if that's gonna do any melted by.
Speaker 2: The time they get to your mouth. I know, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it is a problem. We've talked about this on the podcast.
Speaker 2: We talk about coffee a lot, the iced coffee problem,
Speaker 2: and we've had some people do hacks where they order
Speaker 2: a cup avice and they make kind of a slurry.
Speaker 3: But it's really crazy that, like you just cannot get it.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. Although I'm my husband is checking. I'm there
Speaker 1: all the time, and so in Prague I can get
Speaker 1: really good ice puppy.
Speaker 3: It's really mostly for ud No, it's Italy too, trust me.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, but ice is one of my if
Speaker 1: you told me, one of my favorite thing to do
Speaker 1: in Prague. It's amazing and I everyone should go.
Speaker 2: I love that. I spend some time in Belgium. You
Speaker 2: can get iced coffees in Belgium. There's there's good iced
Speaker 2: coffees in Belgium.
Speaker 3: They know what they're doing there.
Speaker 2: Well, Ben, well, thank you so much. This was really
Speaker 2: really fun and I really appreciate it. And thanks for
Speaker 2: talking about the book with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me. This was really it was
Speaker 1: a good time.
Speaker 3: Thank good. Okay.
Speaker 2: Gaed Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 2: as part of the Reason Choice Network.
Speaker 3: If you want more, check out The Other.
Speaker 2: Reason, Choice Podcasts, Politics with Jamel Hill, and Native Land pod.
Speaker 3: Off The Cup.
Speaker 2: I am your host, se Cup. Editing and sound design
Speaker 2: by Derek Clements. Our executive producers are me Se Cup,
Speaker 2: Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffman. Rate and review wherever you
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